November 22, 2007

A Few Things I’ll Give Thanks For

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Tofurky. According to the Washington Post, the meatless Thanksgiving dinner-in-a-box hit the market twelve years ago, after founder Seth Tibbott endured a nasty holiday bout with a stuffed pumpkin and a rock-hard gluten roast. Well, your suffering was worth it for the rest of us, Seth, because Tofurkey tastes great.

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Thanks to Lloyd Alter at Treehugger for his list of Five Climate Change Events To Be Thankful For:

1. Al Gore and the IPCC won the Nobel Prize. 2. The 1st CAFE standard in 22 years was passed in the Senate. 3. All the democratic presidential front runners have proposed a comprehensive energy plan, asking for large carbon dioxide emission reductions. (but some still love coal) 4. The 4th IPCC Synthesis report was a blunt and urgent call for action. (though it’s not pretty) 5. Public Opinion is shifting: 3/4 of Americans would make lifestyle changes or pay energy and carbon taxes.

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Thanks for the fact that Hassan Mashriqui of Louisiana State University, a place intimately familiar with the effects of monster hurricanes, gave Bangladesh emergency officials storm-surge maps 24 hours in advance of Cyclone Sidr. Maps so detailed that local agencies were able to take advance action, saving countless lives.

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Thanks to Plenty for news that the Democratic Republic of Congo is setting aside an 11,800-square-mile reserve for endangered bonobos—our closest relatives in the primate world, sharing an amazing 98.4% of our DNA, found only in the DRC, the only primates to live in a peaceful, matriarchal society. Now suffering from the bushmeat trade. Eat them? Hell, we need to invite them to mentor us.

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A European Space Agency’s OSIRIS satellite photo of the Earth at night.

Thanks for the fact that we are still here. We haven’t destroyed everything (yet). We might still learn to be a better species and cherish this amazing world we are so incredibly lucky to be part of.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones’ environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

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And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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